Field of Endeavor
The present application relates to enhancing information and more particularly to enhancing optical information.
State of Technology
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's most energetic laser, with the capability to investigate inertial confinement fusion and other high energy density phenomena. NIF often probes materials by impinging strong ultraviolet light onto a hohlraum, creating x-rays that rapidly increase the pressure and temperature of the target. The ultraviolet light is generated by nonlinear optical processes pumped by 1053 nm light. Although effort is made to make the ultraviolet light properties reproducible from shot to shot, the ultraviolet light profile itself is hard to measure directly due to the lack of high speed ultraviolet photodiodes.
Radsensors, which are engineered semiconductors to improve information transfer to optical waves, can transduce x-rays to near-infrared (M. E. Lowry et al., Rev. Sci. Inst. 75, 3995 (2004)). As they are semiconductor materials, ultraviolet absorption can produce electron-hole pairs in place of x-rays, and hence transfer ultraviolet temporal information to optical waves. But Radsensors are very insensitive, and so produce weak information strength on the near-infrared wave. A device that could increase the information strength of the near-infrared wave would then improve the fidelity of the ultraviolet light measurement.